Did God Make A Mistake?

A few days ago, I spotted this gangly, prehistoric-looking bird perched on the top of a lamp tower that stands in the middle of an island of a nearby lake.

My son Matthew at first thought it was a type of a loon. I wasn't so sure. I thought the bird might be a vulture, so I zoomed in with my camera to get a closer look, hoping that I could identify it later when I got home. Well, Matthew and I were both wrong. It turns out that this funny-looking bird is a Double-crested Cormorant.

I was impressed to see how the bird's large webbed feet were able to grab the sides of the narrow metal beam on which it was perched. As you can see, he has a long, kinked neck with a head that isn't much bigger. He also has a small, yellowish-orange patch on both sides of his face.

When the Double-crested Cormorant took flight, I was surprised to see how graceful he flew, despite its uncouth appearance.

Upon further research, I discovered that these birds have made an amazing comeback in recent years after they were almost completely wiped out by the use of environmental pesticides forty years ago.

Yesterday, when I went for the same walk, the Cormorant was back, perched again on top of his lamp post. As I stood there watching, the bird spread out his wings to dry them out. Then a fisherman walked by and scowled, "That Cormorant will eat all the fish in the lake!"

"OK," I thought, "that's an awful lot of fish for one bird." Apparently, Cormorants are hated birds, at least by fishermen anyway.

When I went home, I did some more research, and I found that Cormorants are greatly misunderstood:

http://www.zoocheck.com/cdiwebsite/cormorantfactsheetlowres.pdf

God never made a mistake in creating them! Cormorants eat mainly Alewives and Round Gobies, fish that can be destructive to the ecosystem. They also eat fish, like the fisherman said, but not the ones that a commercial fishermen would care about — Sticklebacks and Yellow Perch, both of which exist in massive quantities all over Canada and United States.

It is ignorant to criticize God's creation. The Bible doesn't say, "God looked over all He had made and said, 'Oops, I made a blunder here, and bungled that up over there. Oh well, it may not be perfect, but it's pretty good anyway.'" No, instead, the Bible says, "God looked over all He had made, and He saw that it was very good!"

"Then God looked over all He had made,

 and He saw that it was very good!"

Genesis 1:31a (NLT)